And We are Out! Joint Poolside Reception

The closing poolside reception provided the perfect atmosphere where attendees from both conferences came together to reconvene, compare notes, share experiences, and further ground connections that were made during their respective events.

Thanks for being with us in Santa Clara! This co-hosted services event was a great learning and networking experience. On behalf of SSPA and TPSA staff, We thank you and wish you much success throughout the remainder of 2008. We will see you in Vegas this October!

Joint Closing Keynotes

Thomas Lah of TPSA and Steve Smith of SSPA held the final keynote presentation of the conference on “Surviving Service Convergence,” following the final conference breakouts. They presented to services executives from both conference events.

Successfully Measuring the Economic Impact of Professional Services

Our third keynote of the morning was delivered by Charley Dublin, Senior Director of Professional Services at Akamai Technologies. Charley did a deep dive into the ground-breaking work that Akamai Technologies has done within the past year on their success in measuring the economic impact of Professional Services. He then explored the fundamental business dynamics related to PS that cause the need for EIA models. From this context, he then built out a general framework to develop various valuation methods and included basic comparison methods as well as more advanced methods that leverage basic statistical approaches. Finally, Charley closed the presentation by reviewing best practices to gain acceptance of EIA methods with executive teams. And that ends the final day of three more insighful and informative keynotes! We are now looking forward to the morning and afternoon TPSA track sessions!

Innovating the Service Development Life Cycle

Our second keynote for Tuesday morning was delivered by Madan Gadde, Sr. Director of Professional Services, HP Software with their approach on improving the Service Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Madan started by outlining concepts such as the growing gap between customer demands and ability to execute, strategic and operational business drivers, and packaged service offerings. He then moved into detail with regards to the HP Software go-to-market (GTM) strategy, aligning components of the service offering, financial models and a framework for managing the services portfolio. Finally, Madan closed his presentation by putting the business model, implementation plan, and elements of execution together in combination with the appropriate controls and measures to optimize the SDLC.

Service Productization vs. Service Content by Nicolas Steib

After a fun evening where members joined one another in small cohorts for dinner and drinks, we're back to business Tuesday morning at the TPSA Summit in Santa Clara, CA. Nicolas Steib, Global Head of Field Services Hubs, SAP began the morning by introducing attendees to the concept of SAP hubs - the cornerstone of SAP's efforts to increase speed to market, secure and accelerate delivery capabilities, and exchange knowledge. He then went on to discuss two distinct approaches to service innovation by focusing on fulfillment and embedding service content into the product. Nicolas wrapped up his presentation with lessons learned such as focusing energy around a strong vision, gaining traction, and then relentlessly managing change to execute that vision. Next up, Madan Gadde from HP Software...

TPSA Attendees Network with Peers

Attendees catch up, create new contacts and network with colleagues in between tracks. Tracks in the morning included Service Delivery, Service Engineering, Service Marketing and a Co-presented Partner Case Study. In the afternoon, they were able to attend tracks that included Partner Management, Service Operations and Service Sales. As our sessions closed for the day, attendees head to the Technology Services Expo for the closing reception.

Service Marketing Track at the TPSA Summit

The Monday, May 4th Service Marketing track at the TPSA Summit consisted of two presentations and were a big hit! We first heard from Jennifer Chang, Oracle Consulting- North America Strategic Programs, Oracle. Her topic of choice, and one that sparked a great deal of interest and interaction was Integrate Professional Services Development and Marketing into Your Sales Strategy. She chose to highlight the integration between marketing and both the upstream development of service offerings and the downstream demand-generation processes.
Our next presenters were both from Teradata, the world's leader in data warehousing. They were Lance Miller, Assistant Vice President of Global Services Marketing and Paul Barsch, Marketing Director. Lance and Paul presented a Teradata case study on The Power of Integtrated Marketing Campaigns. They discussed how Teradata's Professional Services marketing team embarked upon a comprehensive services marketing campaign to build internal and external awareness of the Performance offers.
Both of these presentations were very insightful and informative.